


solace in wintermarch

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Barbarian!Alistair, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:11:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Alistair Theirin o Frosthold was warm, and one time he wasn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	solace in wintermarch

**Author's Note:**

> Barbarian!Alistair is my totally divergent and totally self-indulgent headcanon for Alistair (in which he was raised amongst the Avvars instead of by Eamon). Just in case I haven't mentioned that on a previous fic. Which I'm pretty sure I haven't. I think.
> 
> Also, the title's kind of a pun. Do you see it? :D

**i.**

In the Fade, _Alistair’s_ Fade, beyond the mind-searing reach of the Archdemon, Duncan did not burn.  
Duncan was whole, and smiling, and dusted with snow. Frosthold was laid out behind him like a homespun tapestry, and Alistair could feel the heavy, pungent furs around his shoulders, and Duncan, though he was shivering, and ruddy with cold… Duncan was smiling, and smiling at him.

The dreams usually sprang up on the heels of an Archdemon vision, a cooling balm on Alistair’s mind after the dragon’s psychic assault. He basked in Duncan’s smile, in his voice, in the welcoming warmth that he exuded.

And sometimes, he basked in other things, in touch and taste and heat, and he’d awaken hard and panting, confused, _hurt_ — he was grieving, and what right had his traitorous subconscious to interrupt that?

Anansi stirred, a small elfin boy snuggled up beside him under the cover of the tent. Alistair froze, feeling hot, feeling vulnerable, knowing that if Anansi awoke and turned those luminous amethyst eyes up to him, he’d not be able to explain himself.

But he didn’t look up at Alistair. He stirred, and lifted his head, and slipped a hand over the man’s thigh, grazing the bulge hidden by the old, worn blanket.  
Alistair tensed with a hiss, relaxed with a shuddering sigh, and then Anansi looked up at him, and perhaps Alistair was still affected by his dream, but he saw the same warmth in Anansi’s eyes that he’d seen in Duncan’s, and he wanted it.

He wanted it so very badly. And Anansi gave.

**ii.**

"What are you looking at, Warden?" 

Alistair started, coughed, looked away hurriedly. “Not a thing. Qunari.”

Sten seemed to accept this answer, although he snorted softly in disbelief, and continued to slide the soft, oiled cloth over Asala’s blade, slowly, carefully. Lovingly.  
Alistair caught his eyes drifting towards that slow, sensual motion, and coughed again.

"When are you going to stop calling me Warden?"

"When will you stop being a Warden?"

"Uh, never, apparently."

"There is your answer."

"But—"

Sten stopped, dropped the cloth onto the ground between his feet, put Asala aside. “He will return soon.”

"Wha— You think I’m talking to you just because Anansi’s away? That’s not true. That’s not true at all. In fact—"

"What do you want, Alistair?"  
The question doesn’t sound as terse or exasperated as Alistair would have expected, and he says his name for once, his actual name, and Ali finds himself pausing, thinking, thinking about the caress of oiled cloth on gleaming steel.

"I… um. Well, I never get to … to be with you, like Anansi does, and you know, I’m kind of. Curious."

It turned out that Sten wasn’t as chilly as his demeanour was, and even hornless Qunari liked the brush of fingertips over the place where the horns should have been, and Sten’s hands were just as gentle with him as they were with the blade he called his soul.

They might not ever be close, not the way they both were with Anansi, but they had something, and even a little something could keep you warm at night.

**iii.**

"So… where did you get this?"

Alistair glanced down at what Zevran was fingering, the scrap of soft leather tied around Alistair’s wrist. He pulled away without thinking, cradling his forearm, slipping his fingers over the strip with a guilty, sad look.

Zevran waited, without guile or mirth, waited because he knew Alistair would speak eventually, but would only do so if the conditions were right.

"It was… Duncan’s. He used to tie his hair back with it. I, uh. I stole it."

"So now he is always with you. It was good thinking, Alistair." Zev smiled, patted his shoulder, walked away.

"How does he always know what to say?" Alistair asked Anansi a few minutes later, as the young elf took down his tent. "Must be an assassin skill."

"Yes, charming compassion is definitely something he learnt in the Crows," Anansi responded, laughing. "I think he’s just _like_ that.”  
The elf paused in his folding of the heavy burlap, his brow wrinkling.  
"I kind of wish I was like that."

Anansi slept beside Sten the next time they set up camp, and Alistair sat up for a long while, absently fingering the leather strip tied around his wrist and thinking about how only the faintest hint of Duncan’s scent remained, and how sad that was, how long it’d been.

Zevran crouched outside the tentflap, and whispered his name.

"I’m awake, Zevran."

"You should not be. We have a long day ahead of us." Zevran’s golden colouring seemed to glow in the darkness.

"We always have a long day ahead of us, so what’s the difference?" 

"You sound sad. Are you sad, Alistair?"

"I usually am, aren’t I? Long-faced Alistair, sad-sack Alistair, hey Alistair, stop lagging behind, you plodding mule…"

At some point he’d started to weep, perhaps sometime between Zevran asking him if he was sad and the realisation that he was, he was immeasurably sad and having Anansi in the tent with him might have lightened that load but it’d never cured it, but Zevran was here, and Zevran’s shoulder did not buckle under the weight of Alistair’s weary head, and the touch of Zevran’s lips on his temple felt like the kiss of a saint.

"Be sad, but not forever," he murmured, "never forever."

**iv.**

They’d been like this in inns before, but it was always a rare treat-- all three of them to a bed, so happy to be out of the cold and off of the ground that they go at each other with renewed enthusiasm, Anansi keeping them up half the night with his lithe and energetic body, his youthful vigour, Alistair almost sick with love and want and warmth, Sten bemused but indulgent, a challenge for the other two men, a challenge to see who’d get his eyelids to drop to half-mast and his cock to raise to full.

"Can Zevran do _this?”_ Anansi whispered wickedly, stretched out comfortably between Alistair’s legs. His tongue flicked out to tease the balls he was cradling in his thin, deft fingers, and Alistair blushed hotly and tried to stammer out a “yes— I mean, no, I mean—”

Sten, lying down, lifted his head at Anansi’s laughter. “I really hope you do not plan on keeping at this all night…”

"Oh, quit being an old man," Anansi interrupted, sitting up and leaning over to feather his lips and breath over the back of Sten’s neck, his fingers snaking up over the Qunari’s blanket-covered hip.

"Stop that."

"Make me?"

Alistair found himself nearly pushed out of the bed when Sten shot up and speared a cackling Anansi into the mattress, but he was laughing too, and the fire was crackling merrily in the hearth and the night was still young and he was alive, alive and _happy,_ and that sure was something.

**v.**

Denerim was burning, but Alistair was cold.  
The Fade had shimmered into being all around him, but not the vision of the Frostbacks and his clanhold, not the white and brown and green landscape he’d come to expect, and not anyone he loved, not Anansi or Sten, not Duncan, not anyone.

It was parched earth, and gnarled trees, and crumbling ruins, and a desolate, moaning noise that he dimly realised was coming from him.

Sten’s Qunlat battle cries had stopped a long time ago; Anansi had fallen with a scream shortly afterward.  
He shouldn’t have run forward. The Archdemon was big, bigger than anything they’d ever seen, bigger than the Broodmother in Orzammar or even the High Dragon at Andraste’s resting place, and not only was it big, it was cunning, and ruthless, and it knew where the heart was in every warrior.

Sten dropped, Alistair dropped, and the last Grey Warden rushed forward in a blaze of electric, cold fury, but all the Circle magic in the world was not enough.

"We’re all dead," Alistair realised, tears blurring his vision, the Fade fading around him as he curled into himself. "All of us. It was all for nothing. And they’re not even here with me.

"We die alone, all of us. Every single one of us."

"Don’t even think about it, Grey Warden," a warm, accented voice said, almost chidingly, and before Alistair could register the voice he’d heard or where it could have possibly come from, pain was raging in him like whitewater rapids, and he was hot, hotter than he’d ever been, and he was staggering to his feet, his armour melted in places and missing in others, but not too far away was Asala, and without looking to see where its owner might have been, Alistair took up Asala, stared up at the sky through bloodshot and determined eyes, and waited for the wounded dragon to land for the last time.


End file.
